Feasibility of Boosting Low-Energy-Quality Steam by Using Wave Rotor

Abstract

Abstract Owing to the difficult utilization of the low-pressure level in the process industry, the low-energy-quality steam is often condensed to recover the demineralized water or just discharged directly, causing a huge waste of thermal energy. A novel technology of enhancing the steam’s energy quality by using the wave rotor based on the principle of moving shockwave compression is proposed. The supercharging ability of 3-port wave rotor is studied by meaning of 1-dimension unsteady theory and computational fluid dynamic. A practical thermodynamic flowsheet of boosting the low-pressure steam driven by high-pressure steam is also proposed and analysed in detail. As an example, to boost the saturated steam of pressure 1.0 MPa to 1.953 MPa, a three-stage wave rotor solution is proposed and is verified its feasibility. The high supercharging ratio and entrainment ratio of the wave rotor are much higher than the traditional steam ejector shows the feasibility of enhancing energy-quality of low-pressure steam.